Virtual World Links This year there are a number of virtual world tours planned which require you to download and install software prior to embarking on your virtual adventure. This is a listing of the software that you will require if you want to participate in some of the tours. Second Life Obviously this is where the majority of the conference will be held. World of Warcraft You can get a free trail subscription to WOW. NIAUniverse Minecraft Minecraft is a game about placing blocks to build anything you can imagine. Club Penguin New World Grid Inworldz Game On: Increasing Learning Through Online Games This website is the result of a collaborative group project created for EPS 415: Technology and Educational Reform taught by Professor Nicholas C. Burbules at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, during Summer 2011. The group members are: Erin Lodes, Bianca Marcell, Erin Schramm, Henry Turek, Angela Williams, and Molly Yue. New generations of learners require new methods of teaching. As computer and Internet use become more widespread among students of all ages, educators must be prepared to adapt to the needs of this interactive and innovative generation. This website is dedicated to educational games across subjects studied in American schools. For more information about further research supporting educational gaming, please be sure to visit the section entitled 'Why Games?'
MinecraftEdu Games and Education minecraftinschool [licensed for non-commercial use only] / FrontPage This wiki is devoted to hosting ideas, lessons, implementation strategies and more related to using the game, Minecraft in a school setting Whether you use it in a computer/gaming club, as part of your regular curricular instruction, or even at home with your own children, Minecraft's simple yet scalable "sandbox" virtual environment can be an excellent tool for engaging student learning. The open-ended nature of the game lends it to application in a variety of subject areas. Game-based learning, virtual worlds, and simulations are emerging tools for reaching our learners. That's why this wiki was created. Are you an educator who also plays Minecraft? -Lucas Gillispie, Director of Academic and Digital Learning, Surry County Schools. Recent News (11/10/15) - Here's a Sustainable Community Project we're working on at Gentry Middle School. (6/1/15) -Alice Keeler (@alicekeeler) is awesome, but you knew that, right? (12/18/13) - Great tutorial video on how to level in mcMMO by Aidan.
Clark Aldrich Designs: Using Serious Games and Simulations: A Quick and Dirty Guide In This Post: Learn what simulations are and aren’t.Understanding where they fit in an organizations’ flow of skills.Learn best practices in designing and creating sims. A good educational simulation may look a lot like a casual computer game. It may have stylized, fast moving graphics. This has led to a lot of people to erroneously conclude that the primary point of sims is to "make content enjoyable" often (a skeptic may further and logically intuit) at the expense of depth and flexibility while increasing of cost of production and time to “play.” Rather, the necessary goal of a well-designed sim-based program is to develop in the student a deep, flexible, intuitive, kinesthetic understanding of the subject matter. As a result, students who learn via simulation can improvise better in the real world. Forcing Repetition Having said that, the content of the sims itself has to reflect the learning goals, not a reskinned game. Sims in the Context of the Flow of Enterprise Skills Finding Them
Top 10 Social & Mobile Educational Games That Make You Smarter The Hague, The Netherlands (PRWEB) September 12, 2012 Gramble’s mission statement is ‘to make the world a better place through social gaming’, so it’s no surprise that Gramble has an interest in educational games. “Gaming can be productive, educational, and time well spent,” says Gramble CEO and co-founder Adam Palmer. Here’s Gramble’s top-ten list of social and mobile games to learn from: 1- Apparatus (Engineering/Math/Problem Solving) Using the laws of mechanics, players build complex machines to perform simple tasks. 2- Words with Friends (English/Grammar/Spelling) Players take turns forming words horizontally or vertically on a Scrabble-like board trying to score as many points as possible for each word. 3- Bridge Constructor (Engineering/Physics) Players build virtual bridges over valleys and rivers. 4- Draw Something (Art) Players take turns drawing a picture to help their partner guess a word. 9- Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? About Gramble
Action video games boost reading skills Related images(click to enlarge) <I>Current Biology</I>, Franceschini et al. Much to the chagrin of parents who think their kids should spend less time playing video games and more time studying, time spent playing action video games can actually make dyslexic children read better. "Action video games enhance many aspects of visual attention, mainly improving the extraction of information from the environment," said Andrea Facoetti of the University of Padua and the Scientific Institute Medea of Bosisio Parini in Italy. The findings come as further support for the notion that visual attention deficits are at the root of dyslexia, a condition that makes reading extremely difficult for one out of every ten children, Facoetti added. "These results are very important in order to understand the brain mechanisms underlying dyslexia, but they don't put us in a position to recommend playing video games without any control or supervision," Facoetti said. And, guess what? Source: Cell Press
Interactive Fiction Game Design // Crossposted on my blog with video at The Pew Research Center reports that approximately 97% of teens play video games in their free time. Return to Zork I remember when my family brought home our first computer, a used Commodore 64. After analyzing several essays containing descriptive imagery and composing a short piece of writing about a favorite location in San Francisco, students honed their descriptive writing skills by creating text-based interactive fiction games using PlayFic.com and the Inform 7 programming language. Zork Quest Day 1 Interactive Fiction What is interactive fiction? Extension Play through a few games in the 2012 International Fiction competition and vote on them (you must register with the site to vote). Homework Day 2 Intro to Programming in >playfic_ Go Getters Pizza demo Tutorials ObjectsDoorsDevicesNon-Player CharactersEnding and Winning Extension for Advanced Designers The Inform Recipe Book Day 3 Game Design Workshop Beyond Zork
Sokikom Math Game: an MMO Education Through Social Interaction Sokikom math game teaches through social interaction Educational games have come a long way since The Oregon Trail and Math Blaster. Sokikom is a MMO math game that aims to help teachers educate their students by using this interactive and math-based online world. After receiving a $2M startup grant funded by The Institute of Educational Sciences as well as former Intel Chairman and CEO Dr. Craig Barrett and Zynga co-founder Steve Schoettler, the game is finally ready to be unveiled to the world and evolve out of beta. Similar to many MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) that have many different worlds, regions, and countries, Sokikom has different math regions that each correlate to a different subject in math. The games are all progressively difficult and each math type begins with a fun tutorial to introduce students to the game. Educational games are nothing new; many people have learned math and language from retro games or further back. via TechCrunch
Teaching Kids to Code Every era demands--and rewards--different skills. In different times and different places, we have taught our children to grow vegetables, build a house, forge a sword or blow a delicate glass, bake bread, create a soufflé, write a story or shoot hoops. Now we are teaching them to code. We are teaching them to code, however, not so much as an end in itself but because our world has morphed: so many of the things we once did with elements such as fire and iron, or tools such as pencil and paper, are now wrought in code. In this collection we share many different perspectives on coding, from a university professor's vantage point (MIT's Mitch Resnick describes why learning to code is like learning to learn) to an entrepreneur's reflections from his cross-country roadtrip to bring coding--and his stuffed dog--to classrooms across the U.S. You can learn to code on your own by dipping into one of over 50 tools for learning to code that we've compiled (check out the bottom of this page).